So-Called Dollars, Serbian Patterns and NumisMaster

Rare Ecuador & Seriba plus So-Called Dollars at Long Beach

Out in Long Beach this week collectors and dealers will be gathering for the Fall Long Beach Coin Expo to buy and sell coins, medals, tokens and ephemera of all sorts. Heritage will hold a number of auctions in conjunction with this show, including a Medals & Tokens auction and a World Coin auction. My company, Krause Publications, will have a booth at the show, with demonstrations of our NumisMaster coin catalog website. Stop by the booth and Beth will show you how NumisMaster can help you in your hobby pursuits. Tell her that Tom's Blog sent you!

On a serendipitous note it's fun to observe that one of the major highlights of the Heritage Medals & Tokens sale is a good run of So-Called Dollars, which comes just ahead of the release of a new edition of the Hibler and Kappen So-Called Dollar reference catalog. The new H & K book should be available in late November at a cost of $50 for the standard version or $150 for a color edition. You can get more details and order this new edition by contacting Paul Cunningham at cunninghamchips@hotmail.com. Paul often sets up at Long Beach, so you can look for him at the show. The issue of Numismatic News, which should be available at Long Beach, also happily contains an ad from Jeff Shevlin the So-Called Guy, SoCalledGuy@hotmail.com, with a large selection of So-Called Dollars for sale.

The Long Beach World Coin auction from Heritage contains a slew of great items, all the way from extreme rarities like the 1850-GJ Ecuador 8 Escudos, which was absent in the extensive Eliasberg collection, to some lovely scarce items like the 1733 proof copper Penny of the Isle of man. In this sale you'll also find scarce modern items, like the Order of Malta 50,000 Liras 2004 gold coin, along with classics like the outstanding 1648 Pontefract Siege Shilling.

One particular trend throughout this auction is the inclusion of many pieces of pattern coinage. A quick search of the word pattern on this particular catalog at the Heritage website turns up 80+ lots!There's a Prussian white metal 2 Thaler pattern of 1819A, which seems to be a discovery piece, a run of Victorian Bronze pattern Penny pieces, a unique Korean copper pattern of the 1888 1 Warn and a pair of extremely rare aluminum-bronze patterns of Serbia.

The Serbian coins are engraved by Wolfgang Lauer with a young portrait of Alexander I and dates of 1890-E. They are denominated as 1 Dinar and 2 Dinar and should garner quite a bit of attention, as both are historically significant and rare enough to set their own market value. We'll record their closing price in NumisMaster after the sale.